Hearing deficiencies can range from partial to complete hearing loss. Often, an individual's hearing ability varies across the range of audible sound frequencies, and many individuals have hearing impairment with respect to only some acoustic frequencies. For example, an individual's hearing loss may be greater at higher frequencies than at lower frequencies.
Hearing aids have been developed to compensate for hearing losses in individuals. Conventionally, hearing aids range from ear pieces configured to amplify sounds to configurable hearing devices offering adjustable operational parameters that can be configured by a hearing specialist to enhance the performance of the hearing aid. Parameters, such as volume or tone, often can be adjusted, and many hearing aids allow for the individual users to adjust these parameters.
However, such hearing aids generally do not permit the user to adjust other parameters or response characteristics, including signal amplitude and gain characteristics, and parameters associated with signal processing algorithms, including signal frequency transforms. Instead, a hearing health professional can adjust the hearing aid, by taking measurements using calibrated and specialized equipment to assess an individual's hearing capabilities in a variety of sound environments, and then by adjusting the hearing aid based on the calibrated measurements. Subsequent adjustments, other than adjustments to volume or tone, can require a second visit to and further calibration by the hearing health professional, which visit can be costly and time intensive.
In some instances, the hearing health professional may create multiple hearing profiles for the user for use in different sound environments. Such hearing profiles represent a combination of a sound-shaping algorithms and associated coefficients for providing a customized audio compensation for the user.
Unfortunately, merely providing multiple stored hearing profiles to the user may be insufficient to provide a satisfactory hearing experience. In particular, the limited number of such hearing aid profiles may not take into account the variety of acoustic frequencies and amplitudes of a particular acoustic environment of the user. Thus, in some instances, it is possible that none of the various stored hearing aid profiles will accurately reflects the user's actual acoustic environment. Alternatively, even if an appropriate profile is available, the user may not know that a more suitable hearing aid profile is available for the particular acoustic environment and/or the user may make a less than ideal selection by choosing the wrong hearing aid profile for the particular acoustic environment.
In higher end (higher cost) hearing aid models, sometimes logic is incorporated that can select between stored hearing aid profiles. Since robust processors consume significant battery power, such logic may consume power and reduce battery life. Accordingly, hearing aid manufacturers often choose lower-end and lower-cost processors that consume less power but also have less processing power, which may be insufficient to reliably characterize the acoustic environment in order to make an appropriate selection.